


Home (A Place to Belong)

by blueincandescence



Category: DC Cinematic Universe, Wonder Woman (2017)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-10
Updated: 2017-10-10
Packaged: 2019-01-15 11:54:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,497
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12320583
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blueincandescence/pseuds/blueincandescence
Summary: Home means evolving things to Diana Prince.For the WonderTrev drabble-thon on Tumblr. The prompt was: "October 9th: A Place to Belong."





	Home (A Place to Belong)

**Home**  
_A Place to Belong_  
  
  
i.  
  
Diana Prince lives in Paris. Paris is not her home.  
  
Diana has a penthouse apartment bathed in sunlight and decorated in a style her assistant calls a little on the nose for a classicist. Diana buys fresh bread in the open air market beside her building. She walks to work. She sits below the Eifel Tower and remembers how much bigger it seemed last century. She has neighbors and colleagues and friends who welcome her into their homes. Diana studies their art and peeks in their cabinets. Rich or poor, single tenants or families. The differences don’t matter. Diana is searching for what makes them the same.  
  
Her neighbors and colleagues and friends live in their homes. So Diana lets out her apartments in Metropolis and Athens and moves all her possessions to Paris. She takes a long weekend to discover the nooks and crannies of her home, delighting at the ingenuity all around her. She burns lavender incense until she can close her eyes and transport herself by memory to her mother’s chambers. She makes her mark on the place when she forgets that the counter can feel the heat of a pan even if she cannot. She weaves a blanket for her couch.  
  
In a way, Diana prefers hotels. There is no mystery there, no ineffable quality that she lacks.  
  
  
ii.  
  
Every ten years, Diana finds her way home to Themyscira.  
  
No map or compass to guide her, she sets sail from Crete and lets the gods decide where the wind will take her. Sometimes the journey back and forth is fraught. When the gods have nothing to teach her, the journey is over in what feels like an instant. She talks to Steve on the water. He is easiest to conjure there, having spent the longest days of their lives together at sea. He talks back if the gods are feeling generous. Or cruel. It is always difficult to decide which.  
  
On Themyscira, ten years means little. Change is a foreign concept befitting a foreign isle. Diana dispenses gifts to her old friends. Biographies of revered generals for Phillipus, which Artemis treat as great comedies. For Epione, textbooks and medicines to puzzle over. Venelia likes bits of cloth with pretty designs and gives back prettier kisses in return. Her mother only wants Diana’s stories.  
  
When they walk roads lined by statues, her mother wants to know Diana remembers the gods and Amazons, her ancestors both. Diana recites their stories back to her and tells her how she drew strength from them in battle.  
  
When they visit Antiope’s shrine, lit by a hundred candles Menalippe keeps burning day and night, her mother wants to hear of the training Antiope gave her in secret. The wisdom she imparted and the bruises. The love they still nurture.  
  
When they sit together in Diana’s childhood bed, her mother brushes her hair and hums. She does not ask for stories. If she did, Diana does not know what she would tell her. The first time she returned, storm-soaked and half-drowned, she’d sat here in her mother’s lap and wept for a hero all too mortal. What more could she say? Diana has known other men. There was a woman, an archaeologist and explorer, decades ago. Bruce Wayne intrigues her. She has no cause to weep for them.  
  
Every ten years, Diana considers staying on Themyscira. Given a century, perhaps she could get used to the stopped flow of time again.  
  
Only, the Amazons give her strange looks when she lingers. They know what she is now. They above all others understand the rules of worship and sacrifice. The man who fell from the sky gave his life so that Diana might save his kind. As a goddess, Diana must honor that and so honor the Amazons.  
  
There are times when that mission gives Diana purpose and clarity. There are times when she wants to curl up on her childhood bed and listen to her mother’s lullabies. She cherishes both feelings. Themyscira has become her home in the nostalgic way of men. A home to long for when she is absent. A home that seems smaller upon each return. A home that is no longer hers.  
  
  
iii.  
  
Steve Trevor grew up in Guthrie, Oklahoma both times. The second time, he moved to Colorado when he joined the Air Force and London to work for ARGUS. When Steve refers to home, invariably he means Guthrie.  
  
After Diana's shock at finding him again — his shock at having his past life restored — finally wears into a comfortable, daily surge of gratitude, she goes with Steve to Guthrie. He walks her down Main Street to show off buildings touted to be unchanged since the first decade of the twentieth century. “They’re kidding themselves, God love ’em,” he says with such a boyish cheer she stops him right then to soak up his humor, his resilience.

No one gives their embrace more than a passing glance. “The mores have changed, too,” she says, adoring how she can make a twenty-first-century man blush.

The Trevor farm is older than Main Street. Steve kicks a rock down a path he says he always felt like he had to follow as a kid never knowing why. He has a shovel with him this time. At the end of the path, he digs up a dented tin box full of baseball cards and hand-carved slingshots and other boyhood treasures. Steve staggers, and Diana holds him up. She wraps her arms around him from behind while he laughs so hard she shakes with it. “I’ll be damned,” he keeps saying, “What the fuck?” He is two men with the same soul. All Diana can do is love him twice as fiercely.

His father has Steve’s eyes. His other father had his eyes and his mouth, Diana recalls from her previous visit. She came to deliver the Medal of Honor that Steve’s great-aunt keeps with the other honors bestowed on the Trevor family soldiers next to their photographs. Steve shakes his head, bemused, at the resemblance. His great-aunt, who Steve might have held in his arms had he returned from the War, grins that wide, crinkled Trevor grin. Patting Steve’s hand, she proclaims there are too many double-cousins in the Trevor line. Patting Diana’s hand, she insinuates it’s time for more ‘exotic’ blood.

"I'm mortified," Steve says later from a too-small desk chair. Diana finds faded posters of Linda Carter and Lucy Lawless behind his closet door. He amends, “I’m mortified for a lot of reasons.”

Diana assures him, “I’m charmed,” and takes a seat on his lap. She makes him tell her about homework and his middle school crushes while she traces his features and commits it all to a memory longer-lived than both his lives put together.

 

iv.  
  
The battle is over. Steve almost died three times: once for his partner, twice for her mission. Diana finds him at the mouth of a nearby cave, barking orders over a radio and inexplicably shirtless again. She stays in the sky, hovering until he realizes the glare he feels is not the sun. He looks up. Winces. Sets the radio aside.  
  
Diana hits the ground with enough force to crack the earth. Steve winces again. “I found your shield,” he offers, sheepish.  
  
Through clenched teeth, she demands, voice elevated, ears ringing from the blows she took, “Are you a Kryptonian? The King of Atlantis? A cyborg? Do you have super speed or powers of any kind?”  
  
“Bruce Wayne doesn’t — ”  
  
“You are not Bruce Wayne, you are Steve Trevor!” Diana advances on him, taking him firmly by his biceps. “I cannot watch you die again! I won’t.” She is shaking with post-battle fatigue and the horror of a razor-close call. “It hurts too much, Steve.”  
  
Steve cups her trembling jaw in his hands. “I’m sorry, I know. I’m so sorry. I’m sorry I can’t — I can’t be a spectator. There isn’t a version of me who can stop himself from helping you. There’s not. Diana.” He strokes her face.  
  
She strokes his. She knows this about him. Diana loves him for it as much as it terrifies her. Looking into his bright blue eyes, breathing the air he breathes calms her enough to say, “I’m having Bruce make you a tactical suit. Your whole unit.”  
  
“Waller’ll love that,” Steve replies, and then, “I’ll wear it. Anything. Just — I know I’m not them, the Justice League. Believe me, I know it. Just let me be on your team, okay?”  
  
“Of course,” Diana croaks, hating that she brought up the comparison. “You were on my team first,” she reminds him and he laughs, nods. They keep the original daguerreotype in their bedroom in Gateway City.  
  
Shaking rubble from his ash blond hair, Steve says, “Let’s go home,” and hugs her tight. Diana draws him to the ground where their exhausted bodies can intertwine. Neither feels compelled to move.

**Author's Note:**

> Hello! Long time, no WonderTrev. So happy the drabble-thon gives me an excuse to write these lovelies. Here are some notes, if you're interested:
> 
> — I'm not sure if Diana will be able to return to Themyscira in the DCEU. I hope so! Venelia is the blonde Amazon who maybe looks like Diana's friend? She's standing in for Kasia, Diana's girlfriend in the Rebirth comics.
> 
> — To clarify double-cousin is _not_ incest. It's when a pair of siblings marries another pair of siblings. 
> 
> — Had to do the Linda Carter & Xena gag. Had to. But what is Linda Carter famous for if Wonder Woman the TV show can't exist in this universe? Where's the philosaraptor meme when you need it?
> 
> — Gateway City is a place Wonder Woman sometimes protects a la Batman/Gotham, Superman/Metropolis in the comics.
> 
> — I straight-up stole the shirtless Steve bit from Rebirth, which I love so, so much.
> 
> Will I be back tomorrow for the next day of the drabble-thon? Fingers crossed!


End file.
